


The Chimney

by azriona



Series: Advent Calendar Drabbles 2014 [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Advent Calendar Drabble, Brotherhood, Gen, Kid Mycroft, Kid Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2754767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azriona/pseuds/azriona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five-year-old Sherlock Holmes hasn’t figure out deductions yet.  He does, however, know how to run an experiment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Chimney

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drinkingcocoa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkingcocoa/gifts).



> This is the eleventh installment of this year’s Advent Calendar Drabbles. Today’s prompt is from drinkingcocoa, who requested five-year-old Sherlock. 
> 
> It should be noted that this story was written concurrently with yesterday’s story, though you don’t need to have read yesterday’s story to enjoy it. If you did, though – here’s the story of Sherlock and the chimney.

Sherlock does not believe in Father Christmas; it’s a construct by adults who mean to indulge children without admitting they wish to indulge them.  It’s a ploy to convince children to behave when they are otherwise unobserved, and it makes absolutely no sense that a man that ridiculously large could possibly fit down their chimney.

 

Especially when Sherlock himself _can’t_.

 

“Sherlock!”

 

Mycroft is somewhere below.  Sherlock shifts in the chimney, feels his shoes scrape against the brickwork.  He hears Mycroft curse somewhere below; probably a bit of smut that fell in his eyes.

 

“Mummy and Daddy will be cross if they hear you,” Sherlock calls down.

 

“I think they’ll rather be preoccupied with the fact that you’re trapped in the chimney,” says Mycroft, and he sounds rather cross himself.  “Are you all right?”

 

“I’m _stuck_.”

 

“Besides that.”

 

Sherlock takes stock.  His ankle is in a rather tight spot, but it doesn’t hurt.  What does hurt is his wrist, where it rubbed against the brickwork.  It’s probably skinned raw, though he doesn’t think it’s actually bleeding. 

 

“I think so.”

 

“Excellent.  How did you get on the roof?”

 

“Through the dormer window in my room.”  He hears Mycroft sigh.  “You won’t fit, you’re too fat.”

 

“Don’t worry about me,” says Mycroft, and then it’s quiet for a long time.  The wind whistles from the top of the chimney; if Sherlock looks up, he can see the clouds moving quickly across the blue sky, a tiny postcard-sized pocket.  The clouds are growing darker; the wind makes a strange hollow howling, and Sherlock is just wondering if Mycroft is stuck in the window when he sees his face appear in the postcard.

 

“Thank God, you’re not too far down,” says Mycroft, relieved.  “I brought rope.”

 

“How did you fit through the window?” demands Sherlock.

 

“Never mind that, can you hold onto the end?  I’ve tied a loop, it’ll be easier to hold.”

 

Mycroft lowers the rope down to him.   Sherlock is able to wriggle it around his arms and hold tight to the knot at the top.  But when Mycroft pulls, Sherlock’s ankle refuses to budge, and sends up such a sharp spike of pain that Sherlock lets out a holler.

 

“Sherlock!”

 

“My ankle, it’s _stuck_.”  Sherlock blinks back the tears.  He won’t cry.  He’s five, he _won’t_ cry.  He’s only stuck in the chimney, and it’s only going to rain, and he’s only going to be deaf from the howling of the wind, no need to add his own howls to it, and Mycroft probably broke the window climbing out, and Mummy will be so cross that he climbed onto the roof again that she’ll leave him in the chimney all the way through Christmas, and then how will Father Christmas come in to deliver the presents?

 

Not that he would have fit, anyway. 

 

He can hear Mycroft sigh over the wind – it’s that loud and large of a sigh.  Besides, Sherlock is used to hearing them.  “What possessed you, Sherlock?”

 

“ _Nothing_ ,” insists Sherlock.  He sounds petulant and combative and _young_.  “Why does anything have to _possess_ me?  I just wanted to _try_.”

 

“Try what, precisely?  Try your hand at being a chimney-sweep?”

 

Sherlock’s throat is too tight for his answer to do much more than be mumbled into his coat, and when Mycroft asks him to repeat, he has to swallow several times before he can manage it. 

 

“Father Christmas comes down the chimney, that’s what Daddy said.  And Timothy Welton said he couldn’t and I said he could and Timothy said Daddy was a big liar and I said if Father Christmas could fit then I certainly could because I’m so much smaller than he is.  So I told Timothy that I’d go through and _prove_ it to him but there’s isn’t room even for _you_ to fit and you’re not nearly as fat as Father Christmas so either Daddy lied to us or Father Christmas isn’t real.”

 

It’s a long moment before Mycroft speaks again.  “Sherlock—“

 

“Daddy said he comes down the chimney.  Daddy’s not nearly as clever but he doesn’t _lie_ , Mycroft.”

 

“It’s magic, Sherlock.”

 

“Magic is card tricks and men on the telly.  It’s not _real_.”

 

“Sherlock—“

 

“It doesn’t _count_ if Father Christmas is magic.  Magic doesn’t make it real.”

 

And Mycroft sighs again. 

 

“Can you slip your foot out of your shoe?”

 

Sherlock is five, but he knows what it means when adults don’t answer questions put to them directly.  It means that they don’t want to tell you what’s true.  Sherlock takes a deep, stuttering breath.  “I…I don’t know.”

 

“Try.”

 

His ankle hurts a great deal when he moves it, but Sherlock is able to squirm a little, get his other foot near enough to hold the shoe steady so he can ease his foot out of it.  Lucky they’re the trainers, they’re a bit looser than his school shoes.

 

“It’s off.”

 

“Good.  Hold tight, now,” says Mycroft, and pulls again.  The brickwork pulls at Sherlock’s clothes as he’s dragged up.  Sherlock tucks his head in, closes his eyes, hears the rustling and ripping, the loose smut and bits of brick clattering as it all falls down to the fireplace below – and a solid _thukka-thukka-thukka-thunk_ of his shoe falling, too.

 

And then the wind is howling fiercely through his hair, and Mycroft has his arms around him, pulling him out of the chimney entirely and onto the roof itself.  Sherlock takes a deep breath of the fresher air, and clings to his brother tightly, breathing the cotton-and-feather scent of his puffy coat.  He’s shivering and his ankle hurts like the dickens and his fingers and nose are numb, except for his wrist which still stings with the scrape.

 

“I lost my shoe,” says Sherlock, sniveling, and Mycroft is shaking so hard he can’t speak.  “Mycroft, I lost my _shoe_.”

 

“We’ll get it later.”

 

“It _fell_ , I think it’s in the fireplace.”

 

“Then that will make it easier to find.  Let’s get you inside first.  Don’t stand – we’ll scoot down on our bottoms.”

 

Sherlock shakes his head, but does it anyway.  It’s a slow decent down the rooftop, and back through the dormer window into Sherlock’s room.  His clothes are ruined, and Mycroft scrubs the soot off his face and leaves him to change while he takes Sherlock’s single shoe downstairs.

 

“Mycroft,” says Sherlock suddenly, as Mycroft reaches the door.  “It’s true, isn’t it?  Father Christmas doesn’t come into the house through the chimney.”

 

Mycroft doesn’t look at him.  “No.  He doesn’t.”

 

“I thought not,” said Sherlock glumly, and tugs his pullover over his head. 

 

When he comes downstairs a bit later, he finds Mycroft sitting in the kitchen, rubbing at the second shoe under the tap.

 

“It’s ruined,” says Sherlock, and leans into the sink.

 

“Stop that, you’ll get water everywhere.  It’s not ruined, it’s just covered in soot.  It only needs a washing and a day to dry, it’ll be good as new.”

 

Sherlock watches for a minute. 

 

“Mycroft?”

 

Mycroft doesn’t look at him; instead, he concentrates on Sherlock’s shoe.  “Hmm?”

 

“My experiment wasn’t wrong.  If Father Christmas could fit down the chimney, I should, too.”

 

Mycroft sighs.  “It doesn’t work that way, Sherlock.”

 

“It _should_.  And my experiment proves—“

 

“It only proves that you can’t fit down the chimney.  It doesn’t prove anything about Father Christmas.”

 

“Yes, it does.  You just don’t want to say.”

 

“What do you want me to say, Sherlock?”

 

“I want you to tell me the _truth_.”

 

Mycroft looks cross, scrubbing ever harder at the shoe in his hand; Sherlock, for a moment, thinks that Mycroft might very well turn on him and actually _say_ the words he’s been biting back, and Sherlock even thinks he knows what they are: that Sherlock is an idiot, that he should never have been climbing down the chimney much less on the roof much less listening to Timothy Welton; that Mycroft is the clever one of the two of them and Sherlock should stop attempting to be like him, he’ll never manage it.  That Sherlock is too rash, too impetuous, too _head-strong_ – all words he’s heard his parents use in reference to him, and only the last one makes any sense.  _Head-strong_ – Sherlock likes the sound of it, likes the idea that his head is so super strong that he could use it to burst through the walls Mycroft seems determined to erect around him.

 

That if Sherlock only stopped to _think_ before he acted – if he would only slow down from his mad gyrations then perhaps he would stop finding himself in trouble.

 

But Mycroft doesn’t have a chance to say any of it; the door opens, and the kitchen is filled with the sound of his parents’ chatter, home from town where they’ve been doing their shopping, and they don’t even notice that Mycroft is scrubbing at Sherlock’s shoe, or that Sherlock’s wrist is scratched and his hair is still black with soot. 

 

“And did you have a lovely afternoon?” asks Mummy, as she puts away the shopping.  Milk and cheese and – ugh, fish fingers, Sherlock _hates_ fish fingers.  Maybe he can slip them all onto Mycroft’s plate, and he’d eat them, too, without even realizing he’s eating Sherlock’s share.  “What did you do?”

 

Here it comes, thinks Sherlock.  Mycroft will tell her and he’ll be sent to his room without supper.  Then again, that might not be so bad, if supper involves fish fingers.

 

“Nothing much,” says Mycroft.  “Sherlock stepped in a bit of mud, I’m just cleaning it off for him.”

 

Sherlock stares at Mycroft for a moment.

 

“Nothing new there,” says Daddy, and he tousles Sherlock’s hair before Sherlock can dart out of the way.  He frowns at the dark dust on the hand he draws away, but doesn’t comment on it.  “Fish fingers for supper, eh?”

 

“I hate fish fingers,” blurts out Sherlock, still staring in shock at his brother, who lied – _lied_!  To cover for him – _him!_

 

“No, you don’t, you always eat every one of them,” says Mummy.

 

“Fish fingers sound lovely,” says Mycroft, and he turns off the water and shakes the excess off the shoe.  “That’s done, I’ll just hang it to dry.”

 

Mummy pats his cheek.  “Such a good brother.”

 

Sherlock scowls, and decides to ask for extra fish fingers for his plate – if Mycroft likes them so much, he can eat them _all_. 

 

“Darling,” calls Daddy from the sitting room.  “I think we might need to call in a chimney sweep, there seems to be a great deal of soot near the fireplace.”

 

“Oh, dear,” sighs Mummy.

 

Sherlock puts on his most innocent expression, and that night at supper, when he slips the fish fingers from his plate to Mycroft’s, is pleased to see Mycroft eat every one.

 


End file.
